Technology Processes of Assessment and Choice (1969) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix A
Appendix A
Pages 122-147
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From page 122... ...
Without some rational way of making that sort of decision, priorities in the processes of assessment and response, as we noted in the body of this report, would tend to be set by accident or by the political muscle of interested groups rather than by the urgency of any given problem. With out effective criteria for ascribing priority to assessment issues, therefore, the system would be unlikely to focus attention on the critical questions when they are truly ripe for decision.
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From page 123... ...
It is perceived as a system of interrel ated innovations, some technical and some social, which comprise some sort of coherent nexus pertaining to the systematic manipulation of the environment. From this standpoint, for example, "the automobile" would include the manufacturing process, the system of dealers and service stations, the highway program, urban traffic control personnel and facilities, relevant rules and principles of tort law, liability insurance 123 Digitized by Goog Ie
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From page 124... ...
, and (b) assessments that focus upon the arrangements that constrain such introduction or use, impose obligations upon the user with respect to compensating injured persons, or other wise seek to overcome the potentially deleterious con sequences of uninhibited application (for example, licensing the use of radio-isotopes ; or requiring judicial warrants as a prerequisite to lawful electronic eaves dropping ; or compelling prior registration and approval of new drugs ; or requiring batch-testing of antibiotics ; or imposing a tax on environment-deteriorating activi ties ; or enforcing air and water quality standards at the source)
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From page 125... ...
In many situations, the availability of such int�rmediaries, as assessors in their own right, might make govern mental intervention somewhat less urgent. Yet the proliferation of choices open to professionals makes individual assessment less and less reliable, a fact that accounts for the need to interpose the Food and Drug Administration between the drug manufacturer and the physician or hospital, or the building inspector between the supplier of building materials or equipment and the architect.
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From page 126... ...
. In a number of areas, such as power reactors, j et aircraft, large-scale weather modifica tion, or space communications, technology is character ized by a few massive applications, usually supported in their earlier stages with public funds involving fairly explicit political decisions.
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From page 127... ...
Although the distinction between technologies with intensive economic concentration and those in which investment tends to be more diffuse is thus not as sharp as might at first appear, it seems useful nonetheless to note the difference for assessment purposes. Perhaps a more basic phenomenon requiring explora tion is the degree to which the decision-making processes influencing a given technological development are centralized and hence subject to explicit collective control .
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From page 128... ...
involved in the decisions that will influence their evolution. Although the following classification partly overlaps several of those previously suggested, the panel has found it useful to separate those technological developments that are very substantially influenced by federal activity, either supportive or restrictive, from those with little or no immediate federal involvement.
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From page 129... ...
In both the communications and energy industries, for example, the time horizon for planning is relatively long and government regulation is especially influential. These characteristics tend to facilitate more thorough and critical assessment, as does the fact that these industries sell functions rather than products and are thus better equipped to exam�ne alternative technologies to achieve parallel purposes.
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From page 130... ...
This has led to altered patterns of industrial and residential location, so that older unified cities are being increasingly transformed into larger metropolitan complexes. The new opportunities for mobility are largely denied to the poor and black popu lations of the core cities, however, partly for economic reasons, and partly as a result of restrictions on choice of residence by Negroes, thus leading to persistent Negro unemployment despite a generally high level of economic activity.
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From page 131... ...
or an ecological obj ective, either abiotic or biotic-and then explore how such resources or goals might be influenced by possible technological developments and by alternative techno logical applications. It might be instructive, for example, to look at specific estuarine zones or at wilderness areas and ask how they will be affected by various liquid and solid industrial waste-disposal techniques, by proposed recreational or commercial uses, by contemplated high way programs, and so on .
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From page 132... ...
It means simply that, pending further attention to definitional and other basic matters, the contemporary interest in environmental issues will make its major contribution to technology assessment by pro viding impetus for action rather than by furnishing such action with an organizational focus. THE INDIVIDUAL Finally, assessment efforts might be organized around effects on the life experience of the individual-the development and socialization of the child in a world of mass media and rapid communication ; the work experience of the adult and his perception of himself in relation to technological change ; his access to material goods, to solitude, to human companionship and inti 1 32 Digitized byGoogle
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From page 133... ...
As the panel has already observed, technical innovations and their applications generate spiraling chains of derivative consequences, often dispersed in many directions and often conYerging with consequences originating from very distant sources. One need only witness the cluster 133 Digitized b y Goog Ie
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From page 134... ...
It is critical to be especially alert to potential triggering mechanisms associated with quantitative changes in environmental or sociological or psychological burdens. Assessments centered on specific technological applications are subj ect to important shortcomings with respect to such synergistic phenomena.
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From page 135... ...
Assessment efforts that begin from a segment of society or of the environ ment may overlook new technologies altogether, or may at least overlook alternative technologies and those that might alleviate the societal or environmental defects of a technology that has been identified as significant. Moreover, starting from a sector of society or an interest or role of the individual may make it especially difficult to separate the role of technology from that of social trends or policies.
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From page 136... ...
A lake polluted with industrial effluents may be unavailable for recreational use ; soil cultivated for one crop may become unavailable for another ; the commitment to faster transportation or better communi cation may ultimately foreclose options of solitude and stability. In relation to both the natural environment and the social environment, such "opportunity costs" are extremely important in the total picture of higher order consequences of technological application .
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From page 137... ...
. Another important distinction recurring in the panel's discussions has involved effects upon the primary benefi ciaries of a technology versus effects upon more remote individuals non-users, who are not parties to the "tech nological transaction .
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From page 138... ...
It is important, however, not to treat a consequence as irreversible simply because it resists purposeful modification. Although the cumulative effects of environmental contamination by certain toxic or radioactive substances, for example, are difficult to re verse by deliberate means, some of these effects tend to decrease quite rapidly with time and thus cannot be deemed truly irreversible.
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From page 139... ...
Thus, although there are advantages to being on the scene, proximity and commitment tend to generate blind spots. In sum, any scheme devised for improving the assess ment and management of technological change should make maximum possible use of internal decision making processes and should proceed by making those processes more sensitive rather than by imposing external constraints, but should recognize the necessity for some external assessment and supervision to make the system function properly.
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From page 140... ...
Three distinct approaches are projective assessment, evaluative assessment, and directive assessment. In the first, which most closely resembles technological forecasting, possible alternatives for the future evolution of technology are analyzed to discern the most likely pattern of evolution and to specify probable margins of error.
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From page 141... ...
; in consumer-protection agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Trade Commission ; in resource-allocation agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Power Commission, or the Federal Aviation Agency (with respect to SST) ; in professional societies such as the American Society for Testing and Materials ; m quasi 141 oi9,tized by Google
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From page 142... ...
the mass media? a professional association?
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From page 143... ...
To some extent, the information responsibilities assigned to the Atomic Energy Commission and to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to encourage industry to adopt innovations generated by federal research and development in these agencies are of this character, as are the extension activities of the Depart ment of Agriculture and the Soil Conservation Service. Second: In the event that some kind of governmental action is to be taken in response to assessment, it becomes important to ask what form such action is to take.
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From page 144... ...
to alleviate unwanted secondary effects or to achieve desired primary objectives ; or it may augment its support for basic research and development as a prelude to deeper assessment in some area ; or it may invest in the establishment of a monitoring system designed to detect and evaluate the low-level effects of technologies, whether governmentally supported or otherwise, in the early stages of their introduction ; or it may partially subsidize private efforts to undertake the needed research or monitoring in a given area ; or it may alter the form of an existing subsidy ; or it may expend funds to com pensate, relocate, or rehabilitate groups injured by technological change.
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From page 145... ...
On the other hand, regulatory agencies may tend to invade industrial responsibilities for detailed decisions, and thus gradually erode the initiative and sense of responsibility of corporate management. More over, and quite apart from these twin difficulties, technical regulatory activities rarely attract the most able and imaginative personnel, with the result that technical obsolescence is often the fate of rules and regulations, which are difficult enough even with the best of personnel to accommodate to a rapidly changing technological context.
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From page 146... ...
more likely to take into account the damaging effects of one of its functions on another. The panel's efforts in this section to classify the many kinds of responses that technology assessments might trigger, and indeed all of the taxonomic materials con tained in this appendix, should be viewed as our tentative contributions to what we hope will soon become a sustained and serious effort, in many centers of scholar ship and inquiry, to impose a greater measure of order upon the issues encompassed by the exceedingly broad notion of "technology assessment," to the end that such issues might be better understood and, ultimately, more wisely resolved .
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From page 147... ...
REFERENCES AND NOTES TO APPENDIX A 1 . Recall the "tyranny of small decisions," referred to in Alfred E
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